Grab an otherworldly drink at Goosebumps where espresso streams from premium machines

Budapest is specialty café heaven and coffee lovers can rely on many experienced baristas to pour the best possible morning drink. Cosy outlets such as Fekete, Budapest Baristas, branches of My Little Melbourne and Coffee Stand at Gutenberg tér are just a few examples of the city's diverse scene.

Goosebumps Coffee Lab has managed to find the gap in the market with its futuristic, space-like-interior and house-blended beans. The owners, the design-oriented Anita Tóth and coffee fanatic Béla Csiszér, are vegans and have been selling high-quality coffee machines for years.

Their coffee roaster has already appeared at special tasting events and at other Budapest cafés. Then they dreamt up the idea of creating a shop where everyone could taste premium quality coffee from machines worth thousands of euros.

The special features of Goosebumps Lab are the modular coffee machine units created by Modbar of Indiana, the result of a joint collaboration with Italy's La Marzocco, whose equipment is considered the king of specialty coffee-making. The most exciting thing about these new machines is that the dark liquid drips out of a skinny tap, so it also means that you can follow every little detail of how your coffee is prepared.


After all, the most precious moment for any true coffee lover is still when the steamy black arrives in the cup, the crema appears, familiar aromas too, and professional hands pour in the frothed milk in elaborate fashion.

You can also observe the barista behind this particular machine, as they will be making coffee with an elegantly designed wooden arm. The constant quality of the drink is ensured by a very complex system, in which tiny details such as temperature can be adjusted. Until now, this has only been possible to fine-tune manually.

Speaking of specialty cafés, needless to say Goosebumps Coffee Lab follows the coffee-growing process from green buds to your cup. One of the most important principles is the ethical sourcing of fair-trade, green coffee.

The café also represents vegan values, so you can find dairy- and egg-free pastries of different kinds. Lattes (HUF 890) and cappuccinos (HUF 790) are both made with Oatly plant-based milk. And if you just want it black, you can get an espresso for 490 HUF.

Renowned barista Attila Ferenczi runs the separate roastery at Goosebumps Lab on Vajda Péter utca. They often test a huge amount of green beans before they select the perfect ones. In each case, they produce a light roast from 100% arabica beans, while in the shop they use a more classic Brazilian, as well as unusual Honduran, Costa Rican and Ethiopian specialty blends.

They also sell beans in 2x100 gram packs (HUF 4,090-5,190) made from recyclable material to allow the contents to stay fresh for longer.

Goosebumps can be considered coffee lab, as it offers much more complex services than just a simple café – there's even a showroom where they plan to introduce workshops soon.